The National Basketball Association, attempting to boost
last year's sagging attendance figures caused by too few
photographers getting kicked in the balls and too few
players wearing female undergarments on their heads,
will totally change all the old rules of the game to a
totally new set of totally new rules of the game.

The N.B.A.'s Deputy Commissioner, Hollis Mosher III,
announced the new rules, today, after nearly 15 hours of
meetings with whoever was left standing after the
ceremonial lysergic acid-drenched wafers were scarfed
down to signal the start of the nearly 15 hours of
meetings, which took place in a series of cheap
Manhattan hotel rooms, lit only by the blinking neon
sign on the lesbian bar across the street.

The decision to change the rules came after the N.B.A.
turned down players demands to replace kicking
photographers in the balls to boost attendance, with
kicking premium-seated Hollywood celebrities in the
balls to boost attendance.

The new rules, a compromise which broke the seemingly
intractable player-owner stalemate, were apparently made
possible only by very recent advances in digital
compression technology.

"Using a totally new, high-level compression algorithm
from Intel," Mosher said, "-- one developed specifically
to take advantage of redundancies in sports and games
and other forms of social organization -- we have been
able to compress the entire strike-shortened basketball
season into a single strike-shortened game, lasting for
just approximately one extremely dense,
highly-compressed minute."

In the new rules, what used to be called "passing" is
now called "immoral sex," and is frowned upon, though it
occasionally happens when no one is looking. What used
to be called "dribbling" is now called "being a
self-righteous dickhead," and is punished by lifelong
suspension from all future games. And what used to be
called "rebounding" is now called "fucking up -- really
really bad," and is punished by suddenly, itself,
becoming the only thing in life that isn't just a dream.

Under the new rules, scoring is done by throwing (now
called "eating") a round rubbery inflatable object
(formerly called "the ball," now called "my balls")
through a round metal hoop with a net, still called "a
basket."

When a player does this successfully, he is awarded 71
home runs and immediately breaks the all-time home run
record and is named MVP, Rookie of the Year, and Cy
Young Award Winner. Then the game and season end, and
his team becomes league champions until next year's
season, which
has also been so compressed that it actually starts
the following day.

"Using the advanced technology of calling something
something else," said Indiana Pacemakers Center, Garth
Register Jr., "we have been able to compress a vast
amount of excitement into a much much shorter space of
time -- so people can much more quickly get over these
violent emotions of winning and losing and kicking each
other in the balls and setting all-time records --
thereby gaining many thousand valuable 'bonus' hours to
devote to leading lives of quiet desperation."